


Jorene’s Rebellion

by M J Holyoke (wholeyolk)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, M/M, Multifandom Tropefest 2018, Post-Break Up, Rebellion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-07-28 04:49:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16234538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wholeyolk/pseuds/M%20J%20Holyoke
Summary: For the past thirty five years, Jorene has led the rebellion against Shar-El, the Conqueror-Emperor of Persail . . . and Jorene’s former lover.Now, Jorene is on trial for treason.





	Jorene’s Rebellion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AlTheAlchemist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlTheAlchemist/gifts).



Unless he is killed by accident or deliberate violence, a demigod lives forever. Neither disease nor old age will touch him, and they certainly will not fell him.

Thirty-five years have passed since Jorene first laid eyes on Shar-El, and he is every last bit as beautiful now as he was that long ago day: green-gold skin and plaited raven hair like a curtain of beaded, bejeweled cords framing his face. He is clean-shaven; the mouth is deceptively sensual. And although nowadays he wears the voluminous crimson raiment of the Conqueror-Emperor of Persail during his infrequent public appearances, Jorene knows that beneath those reams of brocaded velvet and silk is a perfectly formed, muscular body in peak athletic condition.

The opulence and overindulgences of palace life would have turned any ordinary mortal—no matter how strong he’d started out being—soft and fat and lazy. But not Shar-El, no, no, never Shar-El. Shar-El was a fighter first, second, and last, and Jorene had forgotten that at his peril. Now he fully expected to pay for that oversight with his life.

He is led in chains to the dais which has been specially erected in the outdoor plaza at the foot of the Imperial Palace. The crowd is thick on the ground, and the stifling air of midsummer makes the close quarters nigh unbearable. A significant proportion of the individuals in that crowd are not here by choice, forced to attend and witness the death of their nascent hopes for liberation from the tyranny of the Conqueror-Emperor firsthand. Needless to say, the army waits in the wings should crowd control become necessary, and Shar-El’s secret enforcers mingle with the crowd, ears open to any whispered talk of treason.

This is but a show trial, a public spectacle, and the outcome is preordained. Everyone knows that; the atmosphere is thick with tension, explosive.

Yet Shar-El seems oblivious to all of it. He looks relaxed, in positively good humor, and he lounges indolently on his magnificent throne like he might lounge in the privacy of his own bedchamber. He is acting like he is more in the mood to fuck rather than to fight . . . or to condemn a man to his death.

Jorene is not deceived. This is deadly serious. He knows that Shar-El has appointed himself Jorene’s judge, jury, and executioner, and this day will end with the ending of Jorene’s life.

The charging statement, such as it is, is brief and to the point: “Jorene an’Shar-El, you stand accused of treason against the Persailion Empire.”

It’s the first time he’s heard his full name spoken aloud since he rebelled. Jorene an’Shar-El—Shar-El’s Jorene.

Once, he’d been proud to bear that name. Once. Before it all went wrong.

 

* * *

 

The tribal village to which he had been born had no name, and at his birth, he had been given but one: Jorene.

Only the highborn and their vassals needed more than one name, and Jorene was neither of these things. One name was deemed perfectly sufficient by the simple people which raised him. It meant _beloved_ . . . and he was. By absolutely everyone.

He remembered little of his childhood because there was little to remember. There were his mother and his father, the other children of the tribe, the stories and histories of the gods told by firelight, the lessons learned from living off the bounty of the land. The land was bountiful and gave enough to provide for everyone, and they did not toil overmuch, so the lessons were invariably easy.

Because the land was so bountiful, it was coveted. But Jorene’s tribal village did not believe that land could be owned, and so no one was concerned in the slightest when Shar-El and his army paused on its eastward march along the same stretch of river where the village had put tent poles down for the season of the salmon run.

This land was bountiful indeed. Soldier and villager alike feasted on sweet, red salmon flesh until their bellies were distended by gluttony.

Shar-El’s legend had preceded him: The tales told of the only son of a mortal woman who’d been adored by the god of the sun. No one had reason to doubt the tales—he was that charismatic and captivatingly beautiful—and naturally, Jorene’s gaze was drawn to Shar-El like the face of a spring flower to sunlight.

He’d never expected Shar-El to look back at him, to look him straight in the eye, but Jorene had only recently come into his manhood, and he also was captivatingly beautiful—long and lithe and graceful, with a complexion so pale that his skin had a bruised, bluish tint.

“What is your name?” Shar-El had asked. Those were the first words Shar-El ever spoke to Jorene.

“J-Jorene,” Jorene had replied, blushing hard.

“And you carry no other name but ‘Jorene?’ ”

“N-no, milord.”

He hadn’t known the power of his own beauty back then. The only thing he’d known was that Shar-El wanted him . . . and that he’d wanted Shar-El in return. There’d been no conceivable reason to refuse. Truth be told, Jorene was flattered by the attention. A demigod. _A demigod!_ Wanted! _Him!_

They’d made love that very night. It was magical. It was _wonderful_.

 

* * *

 

“You stand accused of treason,” Shar-El repeats. The words are slow, the diction enunciated and precise. This exercise in repetition is wholly unnecessary. Everyone knows Jorene’s crime; they do not need to be told. Yet Shar-El stares at Jorene, his expression earnest and open, like he is expecting some important last-minute revelation.

A pregnant pause.

Jorene forces himself not to respond or react in any overt manner. He pretends that he is made of stone.

“How do you plead, Jorene an’Shar-El?” Shar-El asks. The way he says Jorene’s full name—so gentle and honeyed—it sounds like the voice of a lover, and it makes Jorene’s stomach do a little flip-flop. No, no, no! He refuses to give into foolish sentimentality. He will not be seduced again . . .

“I plead guilty, Your Majesty.”

Murmurs from the crowd. They had not expected this from Jorene. They had expected him to proclaim his innocence and the justice of his cause, to accuse the accuser of venal neglect of the affairs of state, of violent suppression of legitimate, peaceful protest, of unchecked disease in the city, of mass starvation in the countryside, of . . . of . . . of outright _genocide_.

Shar-El’s expression hardens. “You are aware of the precise charges against you?” he asks. His voice is gentle and honeyed no longer. Now, he sounds tight and bitter. “You plead guilty to all of them?”

“Yes.”

“Then recite the charges against you, Jorene an’Shar-El.”

He does as he is told. The ostensible reason for the recitation is to prove that he is sane and clear of mind. Even if the trial is purely for show, the audience must still be convinced of its essential legitimacy. But as for the _real_ reason? Jorene is not sure. Perhaps Shar-El believes that forcing Jorene to confess the true extent of his betrayal of his former lover will hurt him.

It does hurt him, of course, but the pain is minuscule when compared to the pain Jorene had felt when he’d first learned that his love had been betrayed. As he recites his crimes against the Empire, the conspiracies, the sabotages, the insurgent actions against Shar-El’s army, one after the other after the other, it is actually _Shar-El_ , and not Jorene, who appears to be the one in excruciating pain . . .

. . . and last but definitely not least, the worst of Jorene’s crimes . . .

 _Attempted assassination_.

Finally, it is done.

Shar-El nods once. “Then the sentence shall be rendered. The penalty for treason is death and shall be carried out forthwith. Have you any last words, Jorene an’Shar-El?”

“Yes.”

Shar-El looks surprised, but he motions Jorene to proceed. “Very well. Please continue.”

“There is another crime I wish to confess.”

 

* * *

 

Shar-El took Jorene’s innocence like he took everything in life—like it was his divine right—and Jorene gave it willingly.

He never could have imagined such excruciating pleasure.

In return, Shar-El gave Jorene his name. The ceremony was performed before Shar-El’s army and Jorene’s entire tribal village. Henceforth, Jorene would be Jorene an’Shar-El. He would be Jorene an’Shar-El forevermore, for names are sacred to the ears of the gods, and once they are given they cannot be taken away by any act of man or demigod.

When Shar-El’s army departed, much refreshed by the hospitality of Jorene’s tribal village, Jorene accompanied them. When Shar-El’s army arrived at the locked gates of the Persailion capital city, Jorene was with them. And when, after a long, nine-month siege, those gates were opened for the soon-to-be Conqueror-Emperor, Jorene rode at his side.

That ought to have been a victory march, but instead it just felt like walking into a nightmare. Everywhere they turned, they saw poverty; they saw immiseration. Who would have thought that the people living in the grand, gilded heart of Persail could be so abject? By comparison, the people of Jorene’s tribal village had lived like kings.

Nevertheless, Jorene was optimistic. Shar-El would usher in an unprecedented era of peace, prosperity, and security for the peoples of the Empire. He would be their collective salvation.

And so Jorene had lived for an entire year in blissful stupidity before he’d come to realize the truth. And what was that truth? That truth was that Shar-El deemed only _some_ of his subjects worthy of his consideration. They had to be the _right_ sort of people—and they had to be loyal. Otherwise, they could go hang. Often literally.

The vast majority of the denizens of the Persailion capital were not the right sort of people. The members of Jorene’s tribal village hadn’t been the right sort of people, either, and for that grievous offense against the Conqueror-Emperor, they and a hundred hundred scattered settlements much like them had been massacred, their bountiful lands divvied up and deeded to the men of Shar-El’s army and to his political allies.

Jorene left Shar-El to his cronies and his glittering palace, and he vowed not to rest until Shar-El’s reign of tyranny had ended.

The discontented were many, and they rallied to his cause.

 

* * *

 

Shar-El’s eyebrows lift. Clearly, he had not expected this from Jorene. “Very well. You may proceed.”

Jorene takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and whispers, “I lied. I still love you.”

The words are meant only for Shar-El; the gathered crowd cannot hear. There is rustling, muttered confusion.

The intervening thirty-five years had not been easy on Jorene. He was no longer young, and he’d lost the beauty of his youth. He was grizzled now, and scarred, and his body had broadened and thickened. His joints creaked, and they ached in the cold. And his soul—his soul!—was weathered and hard, scoured of excess softness and sentimentality by the day to day consequences of Shar-El’s brutal reign.

And yet, and yet! When he stole into the Conqueror-Emperor’s bedchamber, sword drawn and at ready, he could not strike the blow. Shar-El was exactly as Jorene remembered, unchanged, exquisite in his repose. Jorene was involuntarily reminded of all the times they had lain intertwined, making love, in this very bed, all the times they had greeted the morning together, in each other’s arms. Bliss. They’d been so happy! Why couldn’t they have stayed happy forever?!

A strangled sob worked a jagged path up Jorene’s throat, awakening Shar-El. When his eyes flew open, this first thing he saw was Jorene looming over him with an upraised sword.

He’d asked Jorene why, and Jorene had said it was because he hated him.

But that had been a lie.

When Jorene opens his eyes, he sees Shar-El. Shar-El looks like he wishes he were slain. Tears spill from his eyes, and his sensual mouth is a rictus of grief. Neither disease nor old age can kill a demigod, but perhaps the right words can.

But then Shar-El’s expression hardens. “The penalty is death,” he announces, loud enough for all in the plaza to hear, “and the sentence is beheading.”

For the first time today, Shar-El rises from his throne to approach Jorene. He draws the sword sheathed at his side. Jorene sees that he is to be executed by his own sword, by the intended instrument of his failed assassination attempt. He supposes that is fitting.

Jorene lowers himself awkwardly to his knees and bares his neck. The final reckoning is nigh. He cannot see Shar-El, but he knows he is close, and he is not afraid.

“I still love you too, Jorene an’Shar-El, and I always will,” Shar-El whispers as the blade falls.

 

* * *

_~ The End ~_

* * *


End file.
